Category: Flotsam

Catching up on printing

Last night I made a few small prints from the negatives I developed the day before, and managed to get eight small prints that I am fairly happy with.

The whole process took around three hours, including setup, measuring out chemicals, making a contact sheet, tweaking exposure times, printing, checking, printing some more, packup, washing, and putting away. Such is the balance when I have a temporary darkroom setup that lives in one side of a wardrobe in my bedroom.

These are a few mobile phone snaps of the printing process; the top two shots are prints sitting in the ‘wash’ tray, fresh from the fixer tray and ready to be washed, and the bottom picture is a sneak peek at a couple of prints that I thought paired up nicely.

I feel like I’m getting faster and more comfortable with printing at home, which hopefully will mean I’ll be doing a bit more of it. I’ve never really been super happy with how my prints have turned out, but my thoughts on that may have changed after spending a bit of time looking at the beautifully smooth tones I got in the shot of people walking out of Etihad Stadium in the top picture above. The gradients in that shot are smooooooooth.

The thing that I’ve found really satisfying about the whole process in making these prints is that they haven’t touched a computer at all, from the point of capture of the image right through to the print. I spend eight hours a day sitting in front of a computer in my day job and consequently spending another couple of hours at home scanning and dust spotting images is wayyyyyy down on my priority list at the moment.

I’ll post some scans of the prints when I get a chance. Thanks for reading, reader.

Catching up on developing

I managed to get myself into gear on Sunday evening and finally develop some black and white film for the first time in what feels like (and probably is) months and months. Whew.

These are two rolls of Tri-X shot over a period of about six months prior to the end of 2011, so it’s kind of appropriate that there are some shots from around this time last year on there. I’ve hardly been shooting any black and white film over the past year or so because I’ve been focusing on colour film so much, but I’ve gotta say it’s a good feeling pulling the rolls of film out of my developing tank – it’s way more satisfying than getting rolls back from the lab.

Even though I know now that there’s a good likelihood that the film will be fine, I always get a bit nervous as I’m washing the film at the end of the developing process, since there have been many times where I’ve pulled out a roll of carefully shot film only to discover that it’s ruined due to light exposure, bad developing technique, or old chemicals. I’m way more militant now about the process of developing than I’ve ever been, and it’s helping me get more consistent results. Which is nice.

My go-to guys at the moment for B&W are Kodak Tri-X film shot at box speed (400iso), processed in Agfa Rodinal R09 developer at 1:50 dilution (that’s one part developer to 50 parts water, or 10mL per 500mL water), a water stop bath for two minutes, and then Ilford Rapid Fixer at 1:5 dilution (100mL fixer per 500mL water) for around 5-6 minutes. I’m adding a single drop of a drying solution that I think works a little like detergent does (messes with water’s surface tension) to help stop water droplet marks from forming on the film as it dries.

I’m really keen to do some more printing this winter so hopefully there will be a few shots on these rolls that are worth printing – if there are, I’ll post some shots of the prints when they’re done.

No updates for a while

Just a quick post to let you know I’m currently in Mexico for a month or so, then heading on to the US, so I won’t be posting any new pictures for a while.

I have been shooting a fair bit though, on average 2-3 rolls per day, so hopefully I will have a few pictures to post when I get back to Melbourne and start scanning.

Hope you’re well – and hello from San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

DIY darkroom printing

Hello! I’ve been busy planning a project over the last month or so that is going to involve me taking a series of photographs all the way through from shooting to finished prints.

I did a little test run a couple of weeks back to make sure that I could print successfully with the paper that I want to use, and the new Nikkor enlarging lens that I needed to be able to print from 6×6 negatives. I don’t have access to a darkroom, so I tried setting up my bedroom as a darkroom. Basically this involves sitting an enlarger on top of my guitar amplifier case (this is high-tech, people!), and covering my work desk with plastic sheeting to catch any chemical drips. I then line up developing, stop, and fixer trays left to right, and a bucket full of warm water at the rear of the desk to put prints into after they leave the fixer tray. At the end when I have prints I’m happy with, I wash them all separately in the sink in my laundry.

I was also looking to see if I could get the tonal range that I wanted from Fuji Acros. I’ve since decided to use Kodak Tri-X for this project, as I like that its tonal range focuses on a little more of the higher (lighter) end of the film’s dynamic range – or at least that’s how it appears to me. I love its creaminess. As I’m shooting people for this series that I’m working on, I want something that will make skin and hair smooth and to make them stand out. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been developing my own film for a couple of years now, but this printing caper is all pretty new to me. It’s way more trial and error than I thought it would be. Having never studied photography at high school, college or Uni, I didn’t get the chance to muck about in darkrooms until recently. It’s fun, but boy it takes a while to make a print. A lot longer than scanning. But the finished print is so, so much nicer than a scan. The tones are richer, the gradients are smoother, and there’s a chocolatey softness about the prints made with Acros that is just beautiful. Hopefully I can get the same sort of smoothness using Tri-X.

Here are a couple of mobile phone snaps from my test prints – I’ll post some finished prints when this series is ready to go (hello Poison City Weekender art show!).

Featured at Vibewire

The nice folks at Sydney-based online creative mag Vibewire are featuring some of my portrait photography at the moment. Thanks people!

You can view the feature at the Vibewire website.

These shots are part of an ongoing portrait series. If you’d like to see more, you can check out the portrait series on my website.

For the trainspotters amongst us, all these are shot on Kodak Portra film with a Hasselblad 500C/M.

Choices

So I’m heading away on holiday in around six weeks. It will be the first overseas holiday I’ve taken in six years, and I’m pretty goddamn excited about it. I’d forgotten how many things I need to do before I head off, and one of the things is to figure out which camera I want to take with me to take pictures with.

It’s pretty easy to take one camera away with me for a weekend interstate and just deal with my choice of camera. Actually, that’s kinda fun for a weekend. Simple is good. However, trying to decide what I want to shoot with for five weeks is a little more daunting. Part of that internal argument for me is around speed and ease of use versus quality.

There are two cameras that I reach for again and again.

Hasselblad 500 C/M:

Olympus OM-2n:


(OM-2n image borrowed from olympus-global.com)

I know I’ll shoot more with the OM-2n. It’s much more of a walkabout camera. I’m not too worried about it when it’s bouncing around in my backpack when I’m walking around. I’m happy to carry it on a strap around my neck when I’m out and about. I’ve shot with it in the sand, in the rain, in really humid conditions and in the snow.

But part of me wants to take the Hasselblad. The Hasselblad is such a great camera. Actually, they both are. But the Hasselblad takes really, really beautiful pictures. And I’ve been shooting more with it than any other camera over the past six months or so. I know there are going to be situations where I will wish I had this camera with me. But I don’t carry it in my hand when I’m walking around. It’s a little heavier, a little bulkier, and a little more clunky to shoot with. For starters, it doesn’t have a built-in meter, so I need to carry a handheld meter with me. To shoot, I need to meter, remove the lenscap, the darkslide, pop up the finder, compose, use the magnifier to find focus, check composition again, and then shoot.

With the OM-2n, I flip the meter on, meter in a couple of seconds, compose and shoot. It’s quick.

All this has gotten me thinking about how I want to remember the places that I go when I’m on holiday. Do I want to take fewer pictures, but spend longer shooting them, and be happier with the pictures I have, perhaps regretting not shooting a moment that I wished I had shot? Or do I want to shoot more, have more shots to choose from, perhaps wishing for the detail and sharpness of the medium format Hasselblad?

Got advice? I’d love to hear it.

Either way, I’m gonna be packing a shitload of film. Like, a SHITLOAD. I’m gonna have a lot of these come November.